Just in Time for the Holidays – Four New Gift Sets from BBC Home Entertainment

New York – November xx, 2016 – BBC Home Entertainment is releasing four new gift sets celebrating some of the very best of British entertainment this holiday season. Mark four centuries since the passing of one of the world’s best known authors with The BBC Shakespeare 400th Anniversary Gift Set, and solve crimes alongside celebrated detective Kurt Wallander, played by Emmy® Award-winning actor Kenneth Branagh, in Wallander: The Complete Collection, both available now. Witness the spectacular beauty of nature in stunning 4K UHD in Wild Africa/Tiny Giants Ultra High-Definition, and meet the monsters of the world’s longest-running sci-fi television show in Doctor Who: Monsters Gift Set, both available November 29, 2016.

THE BBC’S 400TH ANNIVERSARY SHAKESPEARE GIFT SET

Street Date: October 18, 2016 – In Stores Now

Suggested Retail Price: DVD $37.99 ($44.98 in Canada)

Length: Over 26 hours / 9-disc set

Shakespeare is arguably the most influential author to have ever produced works in the English language: he created some of the world’s most beloved prose and poetry, adapted into numerous stories, and introduced countless phrases into everyday parlance. Celebrate four centuries of the Bard’s work with Bill, Hamlet, Shakespeare ReTold, and An Age of Kings. The set includes a replica of the frontispiece of Shakespeare’s first folio.

Bill

This hilarious Monty Python-esque farce imagines what really happened during Shakespeare’s “lost years” as a hapless lute player, when the young playwright leaves his family to follow his dream in London.

Hamlet

David Tennant (Doctor Who, Broadchurch) and Patrick Stewart (Logan) breathe new life into the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of one of Shakespeare’s most influential plays.

Shakespeare ReTold

This series sees four of the bard’s most adored plays reimagined in the modern day, including Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, and AMidsummer Night’s Dream. The series features performances by Damian Lewis (Homeland), Billie Piper (Doctor Who), James McAvoy (X-Men: Apocalypse), Richard Armitage (The Hobbit films), and others.

An Age of Kings

Before Masterpiece Theatre or American Playhouse, there was An Age of Kings, a 15-part BBC mini-series based on Shakespeare’s history plays featuring a who’s who of British acting talent including Sean Connery (Dr. No), Judi Dench (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), Robert Hardy (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), Julian Glover (Game of Thrones), and Eileen Atkins (The Crown). An Age of Kings chronicles the turmoil, power, mystery, and frailty of Britain’s monarchs from Richard II to Richard III and all the Henrys in between.

WALLANDER: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

Street Date: October 18, 2016 – In Stores Now

Suggested Retail Price: DVD $99.99 ($141.00 in Canada)

Length: Approx. 1080 mins + bonus content / 8-disc set

Emmy® Award-winning actor Kenneth Branagh (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) stars as Swedish detective Kurt Wallander in the award-winning drama based on the novels by Henning Mankell.

Elegantly filmed, brilliantly acted, and set in strikingly beautiful locations, Wallanderfollows a flawed but deeply human detective who takes each murder case he works on personally and will stop at nothing in his search for the truth, even at the expense of his health and his family life.

DOCTOR WHO: MONSTERS GIFT SET

Street Date: November 29, 2016

Suggested Retail Price: DVD $24.98 ($34.98 in Canada)

Length: Approx. 557 mins + bonus content / 4-disc set

Face two of the Doctor’s most iconic enemies, the Daleks and the Cybermen, in the Doctor Who: Monsters Gift Set. The set also includes a Tenth Doctor Sonic Screwdriver, featuring a UV-ink pen to write and reveal hidden messages, and a slide-out sonic emitter with four sound effects.

The Daleks

The Daleks – the fan-favorite mutant creatures and the Doctor’s greatest enemy – are about to make life miserable for the Time Lord and delightful for Whovians. Take a trip through time and space as the Doctor and his companions battle the most feared race in the universe in this amazing collection of iconic Doctor Who episodes, which includes an adventure with each of the modern Doctors. Bonus materials includeGenesis of the Daleks, the extraordinary 6-part Classic Doctor Who story starring Fourth Doctor Tom Baker, andDalek Origins, a new documentary chronicling the history of these iconic monsters.

The Cybermen

See the beginnings of the terrifying Cybermen in this thrilling Doctor Who compilation. Few villains in the fantastical world of Doctor Who spark such terror as the dreaded Cybermen – the murderous cyborgs with a bone chilling lack of emotion. This special release features iconic episodes of both the new and classic series showcasing the genesis and increasingly frightful transformations of these creatures, plus all new bonus content tying together the history of these fan favorite monsters. Bonus materials include Earthshock, the four-part Classic Doctor Who adventure starring Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, and Cybermen Origins, a new documentary chronicling the history of the Cybermen.

The producers of Life and Planet Earth share this spectacular ground-level view of the world’s smallest heroes. Special cameras transport viewers in a very intimate way into another world to experience the titanic battles these creatures face to survive. Narrated by Stephen Fry (The Hobbit films, 24: Live Another Day), Tiny Giants reveals the astonishing lives of tiny animals in an adventure of giant proportions.

Wild Africa

Take a spectacular ride across, over, and through the most dramatic continent on earth: Africa. Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter (the Harry Potter films), Wild Africa follows the powerful, life-giving element, water, on a journey through Africa on an adventure that proves nature can be more fantastic than any fiction.

JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS – MORE UPCOMING RELEASES FROM BBC HOME ENTERTAINMENT: